This story will be updated.
FORT KENT, Maine – Nurses and community members showed up at Northern Maine Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon to protest the firing of Tiffani Daigle, a nurse who they say was unjustly terminated after becoming a vocal advocate for the nurses union.
Registered nurses at the hospital by a 62 percent majority voted on Jan. 17 to unionize and join the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (MSNA/NNOC). The hospital issued a statement shortly afterward, acknowledging the nurses’ decision to unionize.
Eight days later, on Jan. 25, the hospital fired Daigle.
Daigle was a contracted employee, and the hospital says her termination is a result of that contract ending.
“MIss Daigle entered into a contract for services at Northern Maine Medical Center, and her contract ended,” Kris Malmborg, NMMC marketing and communications director, said.
Malmborg did not disclose the terms of the contract and declined to offer any further details regarding Daigle’s termination.
“There is nothing more to be added,” he said.
The nurses union, however, alleges that the firing was unjust. After Daigle’s termination, nurses at NMMC began circulating a petition demanding that the hospital reinstate Daigle. The petition claims that the termination was unjust, and done without cause.
“We demand that Tiffani Daigle be reinstated immediately and made whole for any losses she has suffered because of NMMC’s cruel, hurtful and wholly meritless termination of our friend and colleague,” the document read.
The petition received over 600 signatures.